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Tuesday, May 14, 2013

E.H.U.D.: Chapter 12

Chapter 12

“Sir?”

He wasn't ready to wake up...

“Sir?”

Edgar sat up, opened his eyes, and
tried to stretch in the confined cab of the utility vehicle.

“We're her, sir.”

Trees rolled by in the twilight,
clawed hands ripping at the sky. The
road curved ahead through more woodland, leading to the unseen
destination. Then: evergreens parted,
and a low bunker made of concrete and--Edgar cringed--glass, appeared at the
end of a manicured drive.

The vehicle stopped, and they
disembarked.

A thin woman with a weathered face
appeared from the door recessed in the middle of the building's facade. “Hello, Mr. President. Welcome to Camp Eglon.”

It took a moment for Edgar to
process the name; he had to fight his way back to college to make any sort of
connection. “Someone has a pretty sick
sense of humor.”

“It seems to be entirely
coincidental.”

Edgar nodded, then took a step back
and looked again at the building. His
first glimpse from the car had been of a one-story structure, flat-roofed,
extending for around two hundred feet and disappearing at a slight angle off
into the woods. The building was made of
concrete, but had an angled glass wall fronting it, enclosing a small promenade.

The door the woman came out of was
made of glass as well, leaving what seemed to be a rather gaping security hole.

“Is this place safe?” He gestured at the glass-enclosed walkway.

The woman stretched out an unconvincing
smile. “Certainly sir.”

Edgar nodded, still unsure. The security for his transportation here had
seemed ridiculously overdone, but the security for his home seemed merely
ridiculous. “And you are...?”

“Again, you'd have to speak with
Ms. Telk. Now please, a secure location
makes no difference if you intend to stand in the open all day. Besides,” here she smiled, though this time
it appeared genuine, “your family is waiting.”

Inside the great glass door was a
small foyer, walled, roofed, and floored in concrete, with another set of doors
on the other side. Ashby pressed her
hand against a palm scanner and the door clicked. She pulled it open and Edgar stepped
inside.

The interior was... dull. Against every expectation instilled by the
exterior, the interior looked like a well-appointed hospital reception area:
beige walls lined with dark wood, tan carpet, small dark-wood chairs and
settees.

Ashby led him through a series of
wide corridors, the blank walls interrupted now and again by doors or small
tables topped by flower arrangements.
They twisted and turned, then came to a place where the wall opened up
and fell away into a void.

Edgar looked out over a huge
atrium, extending from his level down two or three floors, walled on the far
side in glass that looked out over a dead, wooded valley. In front of him was a staircase which began
as the same beige-and-stained-wood as the rest of the building before transforming
into an angled, crystalline structure of steel and glass, more reminiscent of
the exterior than anything inside. Far
below it ended on a sea of polished black stone.

“That's the ballroom," Ashby
explained, playing the tour guide.
"Why it's in a secret facility, I do not know. The staircase has been known to cause a bit
of vertigo in some of the staff.”

They continued on through the
facility until they came to what Ashby deemed "the family room."

“Dad!” the voice of Ethan greeted
him before he was even in the room.

“I'll just leave you now,
then. Call if you need anything.”

Edgar nodded and then gasped as his
son tackled him in a bear hug.

“I thought you'd never get
here!” Ethan continued to hold him, and
Edgar tentatively patted his back.

“Yep, I'm here...” He looked up and saw Amanda sitting in an
arm-chair in the far corner. She nodded,
and he began to steer Ethan over to a couch near Amanda. “So, how was your day?”

Ethan disengaged and walked with
his father. “It was crazy! After the agents showed up they wanted us to
leave, but mom didn't want to, but I said we couldn't leave you alone.”

Edgar shot his wife a look, but she
was suddenly engrossed in reading the titles on a bookshelf.

“So then they took us to a big
house in the middle of nowhere, and Mr. Telk was there, but I didn't get to say
'hi' 'cause they put me in a room with some video games. Then after that we came here. It's really cool here, huh?”

“Yep.”

Ethan fell quite as they sat down
on the couch. “Hey dad,” he said after
they had settled in, “is it true? Is
Uncle Isaac really dead?”

Edgar looked to Amanda again, but
she was otherwise occupied. “Did you and
mom talk about this?”

“No, the agents always needed her.”

Edgar sighed. “I'm afraid that yes, Uncle Isaac's dead.”

Ethan turned that over for a few
moments. “Why?”

How could he answer that? “Well...
He did some very unethical things, and now the consequences have caught
up to him.”

“He made the EHUDs.”

“Yeah.
Yeah, he did.”

“But you're not afraid of them.”

The image of Lemlin standing there,
the pistol wavering in front of him, flashed through Edgar's mind. How had Ethan interpreted that? “I was afraid to stand up to them, but I was
more afraid of what would happen if I didn't stand up to them.”

Ethan nodded and then, as only a
child could do, completely changed the subject.
“Can we watch a movie tonight?”

Edgar looked to Amanda yet again,
and this time she looked back.

“I think the Gigawatt movie is
out,” she said.

Edgar smiled. They'd be able to pretend to be a normal
family tonight. “Assuming we can get
access to the internet from in here.”

Two hours later they were sitting
on a couch, Ethan fast asleep between his parents. The room was dark, but lit only by the blue
of the television.

“I didn't think he'd make it to the
end.”

Amanda snorted.

Edgar scratched his nose ad
sighed. “So... What did Ethan mean, when he said you didn't
want to go with the agents?”

Amanda shrugged and folded her
arms.

“Mandy.”

“It's not safe being around
you. You're—you're acting stupid. The country is in the middle of a crisis, and
you start jumping at it, trying to be the hero for everyone. You're an action star in front of Lemlin,
then the only sane man in the cabinet, and now the bringer of truth for the
country.”

“You saw the speech, huh?”

“What the hell is going on,
Edgar? This isn't you. You lurk in the shadows and acquire favors;
you don't make enemies. Why are you
suddenly so out there?”

The contentedness he had begun to
feel evaporated. “Because my country
needs me to be.”

“If you keep sticking your neck
out, you're going to get it chopped off.
You want to put yourself in danger, fine. But now we're stuck here with you, and we're
in danger, too. On 9/11, at that stupid
party, we were there for your career, not mine, and yet I got caught up
in it, almost killed in it.”

“MY—” Edgar began to yell,
then stopped when he felt the movement against his side. “My career?” he hissed. “I didn't want anything to do with that
stupid party. You're the one who
always has to go out and be seen.”

“Maybe that's because I'm not seen
at home.”

“What?”

Amanda stood and coaxed Ethan into
a semi-awake state.

“What does that even mean?”

“C'mon, Ethan, bed.”

“Mnnnhhh...”

“Amanda!”

Amanda glared at him. “I don't want to talk about this
tonight. If you can find time in your
busy schedule, we can talk tomorrow.”

“I'm ready to talk tonight.”

“And I'm tired! While you've been out moving up in the world,
I've had my life uprooted! I've spent
all day in little rooms having people tell me just exactly how my life is
suddenly at risk, and going over kidnap protocols, and blackmail protocols, and
goddamn assassination protocols. We are
no longer safe, Ed.”

“Mommmm...”

“When you're ready to tell me
what's really going on, then we can talk.”
Amanda glared one last time at Edgar, then she and Ethan left the room.

Edgar slumped back into the couch
and fumed. Who did she think he was
doing all this for? This was all about
making a better world for Ethan.
Couldn't she see how much this was taking out of him? Couldn't she see the sacrifice? He never wanted to be president, he just
wanted—

Mistlethwakey. This was all the General's fault. He had talked Edgar into gambling everything,
into committing treason, and for what?
For a shot at recognition, for a chance to make his son proud. Well, he was president now, wasn't he? He would take down Mistlethwakey, collapse
his coup. See how Amanda liked that.

Amanda...

What did she mean about 'what's
really going on'?

Today had been hard on her, but she hadn't been the same
since her run-in with Lemlin. Had this
last little bit pushed her past the edge of reason? Deep down, in a place he wasn't willing to
examine, Edgar expected that the opposite occurred; in the last twenty-four
hours, she had climbed back onto the edge.

God, he wished he could know what
she was thinking.

A cold hand rubbed Edgar's arm, and
he pulled himself from the East Room, from in front of the podium, staring down
Lemlin, out of the White House and onto the couch of the Camp Eglon family
room. He opened his eyes, and found only
darkness.

Sometime in the night he must have
undressed; he could feel the cold stickiness of the leather couch against most of
his body. He sat up and gestured for the
lights to come on, but nothing happened.
He gestured at the television and it sprang to life, bathing the room in
the harsh glow of static.

It took several long seconds for
Edgar to realize that he was alone, and several more to realize that the
television didn't usually project static; dead signal was blue.

Voices whispering in the corridor
drifted into the room, and Edgar snapped awake; visions of Isaac's corpse
danced across his subconscious.

Edgar spent a moment searching for
a weapon before giving up; it would be useless against a Defender. He made his way to the door; if a Defender
were here, he was already as good as dead.

The corridor proved to be empty,
though he could still hear whispering from further along the hall.

“Hello?”

No answer.

The possibility of Defender
invasion gave was to the realization that, like most people, guards got bored
on night duty and talked to one another.
If they happened to get too loud and wake him up, that was a matter to
bring up with Ashby. That went double
for the faulty lights.

Edgar paced through the halls,
wishing he had more on than socks and a pair of boxers. With every step, he felt colder.

After some time he came to a cross
hall and found a Secret Service agent standing at attention.

“You guys think you can keep it
down, huh?”

The agent didn't respond.

“Don't be a smart-ass about this;
it's been a long day.”

The agent didn't respond.

Edgar looked closer, trying to peer
past the darkness, and saw that the agent was standing motionless, his
breathing hardly perceptible. He reached
out and pushed on the agent. The agent
rocked backwards about an inch, but otherwise remained motionless.

There where whispers behind him.

Edgar spun around, expecting to see
someone—

It was only him and the agent.

More whispers from the cross
hall.

Not knowing what else to do, Edgar
followed the sounds, feeling the air chill and his mind disconnect from the
moment. The world he was in no longer
seemed real. Frozen agents, frozen air,
frozen world...

He reached a closed door and pushed
it open. Inside, laying on a bed, were
two bodies: the lithe, feminine form of Amanda, the lanky, boyish body of
Ethan. Edgar padded across the carpet
and poked Amanda's arm. The flesh gave
naturally, warmly, very much alive, but stopped as soon as he encountered
muscle. Her arm was taught, motionless,
just as the agent had been. Edgar
surveyed his family, heard no sound of breathing. He leaned in closer, saw quick, shallow
movements.

More whispering from the door.

Back in the corridor the air was
ice-cold, and mist seemed to be clinging to the edge of floor and wall.

“I'm dreaming.” His voice was hollow and echoed through the
emptiness.

Or are you?

He rounded on the voice, unafraid
of whatever had spoken.

Pale blue light came from down the
hall, several degrees of magnitude brighter than the dull ambience that had
suffused the corridor moments before.
Unthinking, Edgar walked into it, feeling the temperature drop as he
went. After he had gone several yards,
he heard an increase in whispering.

Doubts began to trickle in. What if it wasn't a dream? What if Defenders were loose here? Could they have followed, raiding the minds
of Edgar's guards? The possibility was
there, but Edgar doubted a Defender would be stupid enough to waste time like
this. They had been trained too well;
they would kill and be gone.

The light grew brighter ahead,
burning away all shadow and curling like fog around thin poles that projected
from the floor. Edgar stopped, seeing
the balcony that funneled into the staircase.

Edgar...

It was a whisper, louder this time,
all around this time. He realized that
he hadn't quite heard it as it spoke, just felt it in his mind... He hadn't realized until now, but the other
whispers had just appeared in his mind, bringing with them a sense of purpose.

The purpose for this summons was
down below, down the ladder of wood and crystal and steel, down to the endless
plane of polished black.

I lied, Edgar... I'm sorry for that...

They weren't purely words, but
emotion, image, all translated in his mind as simple phrases. They felt...
Unintentional. The source of
these word's didn't want them expressed, but couldn't hold them back.

I lied, my father... my son...
There is no peace here, no peace on earth... I lied so that you might do what you must do,
what you have always done, what you will forever do...

As the voice spoke, as the thoughts
continued to flow, Edgar felt the cold steel cutting through to his feet, the
icy mist curling through his body...

A shape flashed through the fog,
disappearing before Edgar could see it.

Do what you must...

Another shape, clearer this
time. Definitely human, thin,
disheveled... the corpse-like figure
went unrecognized until Edgar saw the face: Ashleigh Chuskus. As soon as the association was made, the
figure faded back into oblivion.

Other shapes continued to writhe in
the light; all were human.

With a shocked stumble at the lack
of downward movement, Edgar reached the floor.
A patch of fog swirled before him, coalesced into Merv Lemlin. This time, he wasn't in charge, wasn't
leering down at Edgar. He seemed afraid.

Edgar stepped forward, and the
apparition vanished.

Further on, more fog swirled. The shape made this time wasn't thin and
wasted as the others had been, but bloated, sagging. Isaac.

You had no idea... But still you kept going...

The spectral form of the dead
president reached towards him, its mouth wide in a silent scream, then fell
forward and collapsed in a swirl of mist.

It all had to happen...

Yet another shape formed, again
thin, again familiar. The General.

“What's going on, Bob?”

I'm not here...

As the voice didn't spoke,
Mistlethwakey's form dissolved away, revealing another body. This one was even more desiccated than the
first, and familiar, but it too faded to be replaced by a final form, a tall
man of indeterminate age and race. He
looked at Edgar with love, as a father might look to his son, then reached towards
him.

You've come this far; now you
must go until the end... You will be
pushed, farther than you thought you could go, but you will thrive like no one
else...

The sentiment arrived all in an
instant, then the spectral hand touched Edgar, passed through his head and into
his body—

His body exploded in a shower of
pain, filling with a dull red light that pushed back against the harsh
blue-white all around. He tried to
scream, but he felt his throat writhing, collapsing in, filling with strange
tumors that obstructed his airways. He
fell to his knees and stared in horror as his skin began to boil, writhe, turn
to cancerous growth and then melt back, again, and again and again—

Nausea swept over him and he curled
into a ball, his mind growing distant from his body, looking up not through his
eyes but through everything, seeing the specters peering down at him, some in
triumph, most in pity.

Above all was the tall man.

You chose this... you did not know it, but you chose this...

There was a final burst of intense
heat, and then Edgar was gone.

A rough hand touched Amanda's
shoulder and shook her awake. She looked
up and saw the chief of staff, Ashby, looking down at her, her face grave.

“Wha—”

Ashby held a finger to her
lips. “Don't wake the boy. Come with me; it's an emergency.”

Amanda slipped out of bed, careful
not to disturb Ethan, and padded out into the corridor. Everything felt stiff; she needed a better
mattress.

“Where's Edgar?”

“I'm afraid that's the emergency.”

They reached the opening that led
to the ballroom, and Amanda could see, far below, a human form laying on the
marble, surrounded by a cluster of Eglon staff.

“Oh, God.”

Amanda rushed forward and down the
stairs.

“Ma'am, I think that—”

She didn't hear Ashby; her only
thought was for Edgar.

She reached the marble floor and
pushed through the people to get close to her husband.

He lay on the floor, naked, laying
in a pile of what looked like ash. His
skin, what little of it wasn't covered in ash, was pink and fresh looking, like
an infant's.

She knelt and tried to cradle his
head, but an older man with glasses held her back. “Please, ma'am, we don't know what condition
he's in.”

Amanda didn't care; she had to get
to her husband. In that moment she
forgot about her mistrust, about her fears.
All she saw now was the father of her son, standing in front of the
monster, staring it down, sure to die, to leave them all to die—

Edgar convulsed and jerked upright,
the ash falling away to reveal more of his body.

Amanda gasped and gaped, shocked by
how much Edgar had changed since she had seen him last. His body seemed younger, thinner. His ribs and shoulders protruded from his
skin, his skull bulged out of his head under a shaggy mop of hair and a
disheveled beard that flowed down onto his chest.

The doctor was drowned out by a
series of wracking coughs from Edgar. He
climbed to his feet and looked with wide-eyed wonder at the morning sunlight streaming
through the great wall of glass.

He stood transfixed for a moment,
then turned and stared at the crowd that had assembled for him.

“No one...” his voice was hoarse
and wavered slightly. “No one speaks of
this. No one tells anyone...”

They all nodded, unsure of what
else to do.

Edgar stood for another moment,
then walked away in the direction of the stairs. “I need food...”

Several members of the staff
followed Edgar from the room, but Amanda remained where she was, staring down
at the ash that had enveloped her husband.
She felt a cold certainty that this was going to become another of
Edgar's deadly secrets, one more thing that threatened the family's safety
should it ever come out.

And as she waded out into the ash,
bent to pick some up and let it fall through her fingers, she knew that she
couldn't let Edgar endanger the family any longer...